reading strategies or comprehension monitoring strategies?

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Reading Strategies orComprehension MonitoringStrategies?Yu-Fen Yang aa Department of Applied Foreign Languages ,National Yunlin University of Science andTechnology , Touliu, TaiwanPublished online: 24 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Yu-Fen Yang (2006) Reading Strategies or ComprehensionMonitoring Strategies?, Reading Psychology, 27:4, 313-343, DOI:10.1080/02702710600846852

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Reading Psychology, 27:313–343, 2006Copyright C© 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0270-2711 print / 1521-0685 onlineDOI: 10.1080/02702710600846852

READING STRATEGIES OR COMPREHENSIONMONITORING STRATEGIES?

YU-FEN YANG

Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Yunlin Universityof Science and Technology, Touliu, Taiwan

In order to probe the relationship between reading strategies and comprehensionmonitoring strategies and how they function to help readers in comprehensionprocess, the present study utilizes think-aloud and retrospective verbal reports toexamine 20 EFL readers’ performances in reading texts. The results reveal that theengagement of reading strategies is a cognitive action by which readers solve theirproblems resulting from the insufficiency of language knowledge in understandingtextual information (within the text), while the employment of comprehensionmonitoring strategies is an intentional and remedial action by which readersintegrate, monitor, and control their own reading processes (beyond the text).Both of the strategies may aid readers in achieving reading success from failures.The utilization of strategies positively functions only when the readers use themunder specific occasions in reading a particular text. Otherwise, the readers maystill fail to comprehend the texts even though they apply some reading strategies. Areading strategy may turn into a comprehension monitoring strategy as soon as itis engaged to aid readers to evaluate their own reading comprehension. Owing tothe different functions of reading and comprehension monitoring strategies, thisstudy suggests reading teachers familiarize their EFL students with knowledgeand strategies of comprehension monitoring in critical reading.

For decades, a great amount of studies have been done to inves-tigate the influences of reading strategies on readers’ compre-hension (Hosenfeld, 1977, 1979, 1984; Block, 1986; Sarig, 1987;Padron & Waxman, 1988). The role of comprehension monitor-ing in reading has also been explored in many studies (Flavell,1981; Baker & Brown, 1984; Cheng, 1998; Yang, 2002). Althoughmore than 500 research studies have been conducted in the fieldof reading strategies and comprehension monitoring strategies(ERIC, 2005), the clear distinction of them in reading is still notfound. Do the two terms refer to the same thing? If they mean

Address correspondence to Yu-Fen Yang, Department of Applied Foreign Languages,National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, 123, Section 3, University Rd., Touliu,640 Taiwan. E-mail: [email protected]

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the same, why do they have different names? What is the relation-ship between reading strategies and comprehension monitoringstrategies? To answer these questions, this study aims to identifythe relationships between reading strategies and comprehensionmonitoring strategies and how they function to help readers in thecomprehension process.

Since the 1970s, reading comprehension has no longer beenconsidered as a static and passive process in decoding words and re-coding meanings of individual words or phrases. Instead, readingcomprehension has been deemed as an active, dynamic, and grow-ing process of searching for interrelationships in a text (Goodman,1968; Scovel, 1998). The emphasis of constructing meaning inreading process rather than reading products directs many re-searchers and educators to collect information on readers’ cog-nitive processes; that is, their reading strategies.

Along the line of reading strategy research, Olshavsky (1976–1977) first proposed an inventory of reading strategies in the firstlanguage (English). Twenty-four 10th graders were given a shortstory to read silently and were asked to stop at intervals to reporttheir silent reading behavior. Then these verbal protocols weretranscribed and analyzed to infer strategies. Ten reading strate-gies were identified, including three classified as word level, sixclassified as clause level, and one classified as passage level.

Using research methods similar to that of Olshavsky’s study,several second language researchers also made their observationson the reading strategies of second language readers (Hosenfeld,1977; Block, 1986; Sarig, 1987). In her preliminary investigationof reading strategies, Hosenfeld (1977) asked 42 foreign languagestudents (half proficient and half less-proficient readers) to thinkaloud as they read silently. The results suggested that there were dis-tinct differences between the strategies used by proficient and less-proficient readers. Proficient readers kept the meaning of the pas-sage in mind while reading, skipped unimportant words, and hadpositive self-concepts as readers. On the contrary, less-proficientreaders lost the meaning of sentences, seldom skipped any unim-portant words, and had a negative self-concept as readers.

The assumption underlined in the earlier studies (Hosenfeld,1979, 1984; Padron & Waxman, 1988) is that teaching studentsgood strategies will result in improvement of their reading com-prehension. However, this assumption is not completely supported

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Reading Strategy or Comprehension Monitoring Strategy? 315

when the results of some training studies have been inconsistent(Grabe, 1991). Sarig (1987) also questioned the traditional di-chotomy of good/poor reading strategy. The results of her studyshowed that reading is highly individual in nature; most readersuse a unique combination of strategies.

As research evidence indicated, “use of certain reading strate-gies does not always lead to successful reading comprehension,while use of other strategies does not always result in unsuccessfulreading comprehension” (Carrell, 1992, p. 168). Moreover, “strate-gies may not be inherently good or bad for a given reader. Rather,they may or may not promote successful comprehension of a text,depending on the particular reader, the particular text, the contextin which the reading is going on, and the choice of other strategiesin conjunction with the chosen one” (Cohen, 1986, pp. 132–133).

Therefore, to be strategic readers, students not only needto “know what strategies to use, but also when, why, and how touse these strategies appropriately and effectively” (Cheng, 1998).The ability to use different strategies at different times is calledmetacognitive awareness, metacognition of reading strategies, orcomprehension monitoring strategies (Yang, 2000). Flavell (1981)tried to make distinctions between cognitive and metacognitivestrategies. He claimed that cognitive strategies are aimed at thestraightforward goal of making cognitive progress, while metacog-nitive strategies are procedures for monitoring cognitive strategies.An example of cognitive strategy is rereading a text to better under-stand it (Cheng, 1998). Another example of metacognitive strategywould be asking yourself questions about the text and noting howwell you are able to answer them. Even though different defini-tions were given in previous studies, the clear distinction betweenreading and comprehension monitoring strategies has not beenempirically investigated yet.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of readingstrategies and comprehension monitoring strategies in reading.Two research questions are addressed:

1. What are the relationships between reading strategies and com-prehension monitoring strategies?

2. How do reading strategies and comprehension monitoringstrategies function to help readers’ comprehension processes?

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Review of Related Literatures

An obvious dispute in reading strategy research is whether theterm “strategy” refers to behavior that is deliberate and consciousor whether it can include behavior more or less unconscious. ForCohen (1986) and Pritchard (1990), the term strategy is clearlyrestricted to conscious action. By contrast, Barnett (1988) used theterm to include both conscious and unconscious behavior. Similarto Barnett, Davies (1995) defined strategy as “a physical or mentalused consciously or unconsciously with the intention of facilitatingtext comprehension and/or learning” (p. 50).

Because of the different definitions of reading strategies, awide of variety in categorization of strategy types have been pro-posed. Block (1986) classified reading strategies into two majorcategories: general strategies and local strategies. General strate-gies focus on high-level reading comprehension, such as inferenceand monitoring, while local strategies attempt to deal with basiclinguistic knowledge, such as the meaning of a vocabulary and thestructure of a sentence.

General strategies include predicting content, recognizingtext structure, integrating information, posing questions, inter-preting the text, utilizing general knowledge and associations, re-flecting on behavior or process, monitoring comprehension, self-correcting, and reacting to the text. In the category of local strate-gies are paraphrasing, rereading, questioning the meaning of aclause or a sentence, questioning the meaning of vocabulary, andsolving the vocabulary problem.

Janzen and Stoller (1998) also divided reading strategies intoten types. These ten reading strategies are specially selected for im-proving the reading ability of second language students in the EAPclassrooms, which are designed to prepare second language learn-ers to succeed in reading academic texts from a variety of sources.The ten reading strategies as classified by Janzen and Stoller in-clude identifying a purpose for reading, previewing, predicting,asking questions, checking prediction or finding an answer to thequestions, connecting the text to the prior knowledge, summariz-ing, connecting one part of the text to another, and recognizingtext structure.

More studies have proposed the types of reading strategies(Barnett, 1988; Carrell, 1988, 1992). The content and descriptions

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of these reading strategies also look very similar to comprehen-sion monitoring strategies. As Collins and Smith (1980) proposed,comprehension monitoring strategies include: (a) ignoring andreading on, because this information is relatively unimportant; (b)suspending judgment, because it is likely to be cleared up later;(c) forming a tentative hypothesis to be tested as reading contin-ues; (d) rereading the current sentences or looking for a tentativehypothesis; (e) rereading the previous context to resolve the con-tradiction; (f) going to an expert source, because it simply doesnot make sense.

According to Baker and Brown (1984), effective readers areaware of and have control of the cognitive activities they are en-gaged in while reading; that is, effective reading commonly involvesmetacognition. To illustrate how metacognition is involved in read-ing, Baker and Brown suggested a list of comprehension mon-itoring reading strategies: (a) clarifying the purposes of reading;that is, understanding both the explicit and implicit task demands;(b) identifying the important aspects of a message; (c) focusing at-tention on the major content rather than trivia; (d) monitoringongoing activities to determine whether comprehension is occur-ring; (e) engaging in self-questioning to determine whether goalsare being achieved; and (f) taking corrective action when failuresin comprehension are detected.

Comparing reading strategies with comprehension monitor-ing strategies, it is found that many types of reading strategies aresimilar to those of comprehension monitoring strategies. For ex-ample, the reading strategy type of “identifying a purpose for read-ing” in Janzen and Stoller’s (1998) study is almost the same as thecomprehension monitoring strategy type “clarifying the purposesof reading” in Baker and Brown’s (1984) research. The strategy“rereading” in Block’s (1986) research is also found in Collins andSmith’s categories of “reread the current sentences” (1980). More-over, the reading strategy type of “monitoring comprehension” and“self-correcting” are also identified by Baker and Brown’s “moni-toring ongoing activities to determine whether comprehension isoccurring” and “taking corrective action when failures in compre-hension are detected.”

It seems that the definition, content, and description of read-ing strategies are very similar to those of comprehension monitor-ing strategies, although the definition of each strategy may vary

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subtly from studies to studies. Williams and Burden (1997) statedthat reading strategies are the general mental processes rangingfrom working out the meaning of words in context to extract thegist. Comprehension monitoring strategies are more concernedwith thinking about the reading experience itself. Cohen (1998)described comprehension monitoring strategies as dealing with“pre-assessment and pre-planning, on-line planning and evalua-tion, and post-evaluation of language learning activities and oflanguage use events” (p. 7). He also acknowledged that more inves-tigations have to be done in order to make the distinction betweencomprehension monitoring and reading strategies clear.

Method

In order to achieve the research purpose and to answer researchquestions in this study, experiments were conducted in two phases:a think-aloud procedure and a follow-up retrospective reporting.Since reading strategies cannot be truly found unless readers ac-tually involve in their reading process, the think-aloud approachin the first phase targets detecting readers’ adoption of readingstrategies in the ongoing comprehension process. The accommo-dation of retrospective reporting in the second phase would clarifywhether readers monitored what was going on in their minds dur-ing the process of reading. Two sets of data were further collectedfrom each participant: think-aloud verbal report and retrospectiveverbal report.

Participants

It is known that background knowledge would influence readers’understanding of English texts. In order to control the factor, par-ticipants in this study should share the same background knowl-edge. Under this consideration, 49 subjects were recruited fromthe Department of Industrial Management (IM) and 50 subjectsfrom the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at one uni-versity from the central part of Taiwan, for they all took the courseof “Introduction to Physics” from junior high to senior high schooland all of them are taking “Freshman Physics” as a required courseduring the time when the experiment was conducted.

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In addition, the recruited participants were categorized toproficient or less-proficient readers based on their reading scoreson the General English Proficiency Test(GEPT, 2004; Language Train-ing and Testing Center, 2004). The General English Proficiency Test isused nationwide in Taiwan and is divided into four levels: elemen-tary, intermediate, high-intermediate, and advanced levels. Thesefour levels correspond to English level in junior high, senior high,college, and graduate schools in the Taiwanese educational system.Each level incorporates listening, reading, writing, and speakingcomponents. All participants took the intermediate level readingsection of the General English Proficiency Test. The results showed that55 students passed the intermediate level in reading section, while44 failed. Among the 55 passing students, the top 20% studentswere chosen as proficient readers, including 10 subjects: 8 malesand 2 females; the bottom 25% were selected as less-proficientreaders, including 10 subjects: 9 males and 1 female.

Selecting the Testing Materials

In order to examine the reading performances of proficient andless-proficient readers, different levels of English texts were se-lected. The selecting criteria and procedures are described as fol-lows. First, the topics should be familiar to all of the subjects. Onlywhen proficient and less-proficient readers understand the pro-vided texts can they use reading strategies or comprehension mon-itoring strategies to solve the problems or difficulties in the read-ing process. Since the selected 20 students in this study were fromthe College of Engineering and Management and were all taking“Freshman Physics” as a required course during the time when theexperiment was conducted, the texts explaining motion were se-lected to examine the subjects’ reading comprehension processes.Sources for selecting the testing materials include “The New Bookof Knowledge” and an article from the website “Infoplease Kids”(www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0859782.htm).

Second, the English teachers of the two classes were askedto select three texts from the articles provided by the researcher.The first text is for think-aloud training; the second one, corre-sponding to senior high school level, is for less-proficient readers;and the third one, corresponding to freshmen level of college, isfor proficient readers. The three texts are shown in Appendixes

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I, II, and III. Due to the mentioned factors, the texts of differentlevels are attributed to the proficient and less-proficient readers,respectively.

Procedures for Data Collection

TRAINING OF THE THINK-ALOUD TASK

Before the formal experiments began, each subject wastrained to be familiar with the think-aloud task. The experimentermet the subjects individually in a small classroom and introducedthe think-aloud task. Participants were allowed to raise any ques-tions during the introductory phrase. After the introduction, thesubject was given the first text for training. Upon finishing thetraining, each subject was asked again whether he/she had anyquestions about the task. All of the subjects were informed thattheir verbal reports would be recorded and transcribed in the for-mal experiments.

FORMAL EXPERIMENTS

The formal experiments started as soon as the training wascompleted. In the experiment, each subject was required to readthe article and independently generate meanings from the text.They were allowed to report their comprehension process in Man-darin Chinese. The experimenter provided neither explanationsnor assistance to the subjects or purposely intervened in the sub-jects’ comprehension process. However, if the subjects kept silentfor a long period of time or were stuck in interpreting the meaningsof the sentences, the experimenter encouraged them to speak outby saying, “Don’t be afraid of expressing yourself” or “Just expresswhat you want to say.” The subjects’ verbal reports were recorded.

After finishing the think-aloud task, the experimenter playedthe tape and asked the subjects to explain how they comprehendedeach sentence and what strategies they adopted to overcome thereading difficulties, retrospectively. The subjects’ retrospective ver-bal reports were, again, recorded.

During the phase of retrospective verbal report, the teacherasked questions to clarify and confirm what was really going on inthe readers’ minds and to know why and how readers made certaindecisions.

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Data Analysis

Participants’ think-aloud and retrospective protocols were tran-scribed verbatim. The transcripts were then analyzed in the follow-ing order: identifying types of reading strategies and how they wereused by the participants and identifying types of comprehensionmonitoring strategies and how they were used by the participants.

The present study utilizes the combination of some re-searchers’ categories and definitions of reading strategies and com-prehension monitoring strategies. The reading strategies includerereading, suspending problems, questioning, guessing meaning,connecting the text to the prior knowledge, using context clues,self-correcting (Block, 1986; Janzen & Stoller, 1998; Sheorey &Mokhtari, 2001; Yang, 2000), and the comprehension monitoringstrategies include ignore and read on, suspend judgment, forma tentative hypothesis, reread the current sentences, reread theprevious context, and monitor oneself (Collins & Smith, 1980;Palincsar & Brown, 1989). Twenty subjects’ think-aloud and retro-spective protocols were analyzed on the basis of these strategies.The interrator reliability is 0.79.

The following tables present examples of reading and com-prehension monitoring strategies utilized by the subjects in thisstudy. Each type of reading strategy is defined and explained byone example chosen from the 20 subjects’ think-aloud protocolsshown. Each type of comprehension monitoring strategy is definedand explained by one example chosen from the 20 subjects’ retro-spective protocols shown in the Examples in Table 2. The protocolsare presented by back-translation. Following some of examples areinterpretations of the protocols. The interpretations are shown inparenthesis, in which the experimenter states whose protocol is se-lected. Categories of statements and examples in reading strategiesand comprehension monitoring strategies are shown in Table 1and Table 2, respectively.

While reading, readers would utilize some strategies from timeto time to aid their reading comprehension and interpretation.For example, when reading the third sentence in the second para-graph of the text, Student A was not sure of the meaning of “pro-portional,” but later s/he took a guess based on the topic-relatedclues and succeeded.

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TABLE 1 Categories of Statements in Reading Strategies and Examples

1. Rereading (Block, 1986; Janzen & Stoller, 1998)The reader rereads a part of the reading passage silently or aloud.Example: The “equation” for this problem is F = m × a.

(Student A: Reread the word, “equation” in the third sentence in thesecond paragraph of the article in Appendix II.)

2. Suspending problems (Yang, 2000)The reader suspends responses to words or sentences they do not understandand expect to figure out the meanings in the context.Example: If it leaves the thrower’s hand traveling 50 miles per hour parallelto the ground, it will move at that same speed. . . . This is accelerated motionbecause the vertical speed of the ball is changing throughout its course.

(Student L: When interpreting the third sentence in the last paragraph of Appendix III,Student L suspended the unknown phrase, “throughout its course” at first andsuccessfully figured out its meaning in the sixth sentence in the same paragraph.)

3. Questioning (Block, 1986; Janzen & Stoller, 1998)The reader poses the questions in the reading process.Examples: To you, the car is moving. . . Can I skip this sentence? (T:Okay.). . . Can I pause here? There are two basic kinds of motion.

(Student N: When interpreting the last two sentences in the secondparagraph of the text, Student N asked if s/he could skip sentences.Afterwards, s/he continued to interpret the following paragraph.)

4. Guessing meaning (Yang, 2000; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001)The reader uses the process of guessing to infer the meaning of unfamiliar wordsor sentences in the text.

Example: Acceleration and mass to an object . . . are not. . . the word shouldstand for proportional. (Student A)

5. Connecting the text to prior knowledge (Janzen & Stoller, 1998)The reader connects their background knowledge with the new information.Example: If an object. . . we say that is . . . that is limitedness. . . No, no, no.What does it mean? That is infinity. That is. . . not infinity. . . I forgot it.

(Student Q: When interpreting the phrase, ”uniform motion” in thesentence, S/he tried to connect it with the idea he’s learned before.)

6. Using context clues (Janzen & Stoller, 1998; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001)The reader gets clues from what s/he read previously to find out the main pointsor meaning of other words, sentences, or paragraphs in the reading process.Example: I don’t understand the last word “proportional” of this sentence.But I think it says acceleration and mass are not absolutely related. . . . You canread the following sentence, which says a heavier object. . . an object with a largermass. . . M and A are not proportional.

(Student G: When s/he saw “proportional” for the first time, Student Gmisinterpreted it as related. However, after s/he read the following sentences,s/he figured out the correct meaning of “proportional.”)

7. Self-correcting (Block, 1986)The reader changes his/her previous incorrect notions and corrects them.Example: If the speed or direction chan, If the speed or direction of the objectchanges, then it is an acceleration law.

(Student R: When interpreting the fourth sentence in the third paragraphof the text, s/he corrected his/her previous interpretation)

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TABLE 2 Categories of Statements in Comprehension Monitoring Strategiesand Examples

1. Ignore and read on (Collins & Smith, 1980)The reader ignores unknown words and phrases and continues reading bec-ause he/she thinks those unknown words or phrases are unimportantinformation, which do not hinder his/her comprehension.Example: (T: Don’t you know the middle word, “I-s-s-a-c?” Did it influenceyou to understand it means Newton?) No, I did think so.

(Student E: Student E ignored Newton’s first name “Isaac” andsuccessfully comprehended the man is Newton.)

2. Suspend judgment (Collins & Smith, 1980)The reader skips their judgment toward unknown words, phrases or senten-ces, and after he/she understands later sentences or paragraphs, he/shegoes back and comprehends previous unknown parts.Example: (T: Why did you skipped here?) I don’t know what “throughout its course” here means.(T: Do you think it influences you on understanding this sentence? Do you think it’s animportant phrase?) No, it seems to me it has no influence on my understanding of this sentence.(T: Do you know the phrase, “throughout its course” now?) Yes. Throughout its course.

(Student L: L chose to skip the unknown phrase in this sentence and then foundit out later.)

3. Form a tentative hypothesis (Collins & Smith, 1980)The reader forms a tentative hypothesis toward unknown words, phrases orsentences, and as reading continues he/she examines the correctness of thehypothesis.Example: (T: Here, you said you didn’t understand this word. Did you make a guess that itmeans “proportion”?) Here, it said, “F equals M by A.” Later, it said. . . I’ve memorized it before!If F is unchangeable, M and A is an inverse proportion. (T: Oh.) Yes. M is “mass”; Ais “acceleration”. Then I reasoned if “not” is put in the front part, the latter one is “proportion.”It is either “proportion” or “inverse proportion.” (Laugh) I thought it in this way. (Student A)

4. Reread current sentences or look for a tentative hypothesis (Collins &Smith, 1980)The reader rereads current sentences for better comprehension of the textsand sometimes finds some clues within the sentences.Example: Let me read it again. Here, “they” stands for the three basic ideas.

(Student G: Student G read the sentence, “They have been proven somuch. . . .” again.)

5. Reread the previous context (Collins & Smith, 1980)The reader rereads the previous context, or sometimes the followingcontext, and uses context clues to comprehend the text.Example: (T: Why did you make sure “uniform” meant average?) Because accordingto the context and common sense in the daily life, I thought it meant average.

(Student Q: When Student Q read the sentence, “If a car moving down. . . is inuniform motion,” Q made sure that “uniform” meant average in accordancewith the context. Although G still interpreted “uniform” incorrectly inthis sentence, G indeed utilized such strategy to help reading.)

(Continued on next page)

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TABLE 2 Categories of Statements in Comprehension Monitoring Strategiesand Examples (Continued)

6. Monitor oneself (Palincsar & Brown, 1989)The reader takes actions to evaluate his or her own performance to verify wh-ether the comprehension is correct or not.Example: I couldn’t make sure if “frame” refers to frame or something else. (T:So you couldn’t identify it) No. But reference frame sounds. . . a littleawkward. (T: So you were thinking about it, right?) Yes.

(Student K: Here, Student K evaluated his or her own interpretation andtried to figure out a better one for the word “frame.”)

Results

In order to probe the relationship between reading strategies andcomprehension monitoring strategies and how the two strategiesfunction in a reader’s comprehension process, two subjects’ ver-bal reports were further analyzed and utilized as examples in thepresent study.

Following are tables presenting the analyses of two differentstudents’ engagements of reading and comprehension monitor-ing strategies. In reading strategies, the traditional analysis ofthink-aloud protocols was conducted; in comprehension moni-toring strategies, those of retrospective ones were used in dataanalysis. In the analysis of think-aloud protocols, all the verbal re-ports are presented in the first column of Table 3. In the back-translations of retrospective protocols, all the data are presentedin the first column of Table 4. Comprehension monitoring strate-gies were abbreviated as CM in all tables. Following the analysisof engagements of reading or comprehension monitoring strate-gies, the right column is some interpretations of selected subjects’protocols. All the interpretations of the protocols are presented inparentheses.

Compared Student K’s think-aloud protocols with the retro-spective ones, it is worth noticing that reading strategies couldhardly be observed in the think-aloud procedure. The possiblereason is that he has sufficient language knowledge to decodesentences so his interpreting process is fast and automatic. Wheninterpreting sentence nine as shown, in Table 3 Student K utilizedmany strategies to help his reading; therefore, it can be reasoned

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TABLE 3 Student K’s Protocols and Engagements of Reading Strategies(Proficient Reader)

Engagements ofBack-Translations of Protocols Reading Strategies

Paragraph 2 Self-correctingThe place. . . . from which you watch aspe …you watch a special motion iscalled. . . your reference point,reference. . . reference…referenceframe.

(At first, Student K interpreted“frame of reference” as referencepoint, but he changed it intoreference frame later.)

For example, you are standing on theground watching a…watching a car passby, . . . your reference frame is …theEarths surface.

Unobservable(Student K successfully obtainedthe meaning of the sentence)

. . . To you, . . . To you, the car. . . ismoving.

Suspending problems(Student K skipped the unknownword “appears” in this sentence.)

But a motion is given to different. . .given to-given to differentpeople. . . people who look differentlyhave different reference frames.

Unobservable(Even if Student K spent muchtime in comprehending “a givenmotion can look different topeople. . . ,” s/he still completedthe interpretation.)

To some . . . To someone whosereference frame is the car, the car doesnot . . . appear . . . the car is not moving.

Suspending problems (failed)(When interpreting the sentence,Student K skipped the unknownword, “appears,” whose meaningin this sentence is seems.)

Paragraph 3 Rereading“motion” There are two basic . . . twobasic . . . basic. . . .

Suspending problems (failed)(When interpreting this sentence,Student K reread the word,“motion.” Besides, s/he skippedthe word-”kinds” in the sentence.)

If . . . an object . . . moves at a constantspeed, covering the same distance eachsecond without changing direction, wesay we say that is in uniform motion.”

Unobservable(Student K successfully obtainedthe meaning of the sentence andinterpreted it.)

. . . A car . . . moving down the streetat . . . 30 miles per hour . . . is inuniform motion.

Suspending(Student K successfully obtainedthe meaning of the sentence andinterpreted it. Besides, s/he chosenot to interpret 48 kilometers inparentheses.)


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TABLE 3 Student K’s Protocols and Engagements of Reading Strategies(Proficient Reader) (Continued)

Engagements ofBack-Translations of Protocols Reading Strategies

If . . . the speed or direction of the objectchanges, then it is …in accelerated. . . motion.

Unobservable(Student K successfully obtainedthe meaning of the sentence andinterpreted it.)

A car speeding up from the still state orafter slowing down . . . to . . . go around. . . a “curve” is in . . . deceleration.

Rereading(Student K interpreted “a stopsign” as the still state and justreread “curve” without furtherinterpretations.)

that Student K’s language knowledge is sufficient for him to readthese sentences without confronting any problems.

When encountering reading problems, Student K adoptedsome strategies to better reading. For example, seen from thethink-aloud protocol of sentence one in Table 3, Student K in-terpreted “frame of reference” as reference point in the first place;nonetheless, he took an action to correct it as reference frame af-ter a while. And seen from the retrospective protocol of the samesentence in Table 4, it is obvious that Student K kept activatinghis comprehension monitoring knowledge to monitor his ownreading process; however, the utilization of any comprehensionmonitoring strategies was not observed. This proves that StudentK successfully completed the reading and interpreting task withhis language knowledge and utilization of self-correcting strategy.Therefore, the adoption of any comprehension monitoring strate-gies is not necessary here. Here, the reading strategy functionedto help a reader overcome his/her reading problems that wereresulted from insufficient language knowledge.

When interpreting paragraphs three and four, it is apparentthat if Student G did not understand or make sure about the mean-ings of some particular words, phrases, or sentences, the strategiesfor getting meaning were utilized. When interpreting the word“acceleration” in sentence two, Student G was not sure its mean-ing first; however, later s/he thought of theories about accelera-tion and successfully used his/her prior knowledge to decode the

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TABLE 4 Student K’s Protocols and Engagements of ComprehensionMonitoring Strategies

Back-Translations of Protocols Engagements of CM Strategies

Paragraph 2 Unobservable. . . (T: Where did you think itsdifficult?). . . (T: Word?) I thought the“frame”. . . (T: frame?) Hum. (T: Did youmean that you didnt know its meaningor that you knew the meaning, but youcouldnt interpret it?) I couldnt makesure if “frame” refers to frame orsomething else. (T: So you couldntidentify it . . . ) No. But reference framesounds…a little awkward. (T: So youwere thinking about it, right?) Yes. (T:Why did you pause for much time in thepart, “you watch a particular motion?Meaning?”) I understood, but…(T: Youjust couldnt integrate the wholesentence, could you?) No.

(Student K was conscious that heinterpreted “frame” awkwardly,so he kept thinking about it.Here, Student K demonstratedthat he did possess theknowledge of comprehensionmonitoring, and tried to correcthis own interpretation.)

Unobservable(T: Its not hard, is it?) No. (T: Then, do

you still think “the frame of reference” isawkward?) Should it be interpreted asreference point? (T: So you justinterpreted the phrase in this way, butyou still thought the interpretation wasawkward, didnt you?) Yes.

(Except the uncertainty ofhis/her own interpretation of“frame,” Student K rarely metproblems in the comprehensionof the sentence. In this phase,s/he had doubts about his owninterpretation of “the frame ofreference.”)

Suspend judgment(T: Do you think this sentence is difficult?)

…No. (T: No? Why did you stop afteryou interpreted “To you?”) Because ofthe word, “appears.” (T: You just…couldnt figure out what it means here,could you?) No.

(Student K knew that theobstacle in his/hercomprehension of this sentenceis “appears;” however, heeventually didnot gain themeaning of “appears.”)

Unobservable(T: Do you think the sentence is difficult in

the first phrase?) Yes. (T: you think itlooks okay now, right?) Yes. (T: Do youhave any problems in interpreting thesentence?) “given.” (T: Thats why youjust stuck and paused, right?) Yes. (T:You couldnt figure it out. Okay.)

(Student K could recognize hisinterpretation failure, but he didnot take any strategies to repairit in this phase.)


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TABLE 4 Student K’s Protocols and Engagements of ComprehensionMonitoring Strategies (Continued)


Ignore and read on(T: So your problem was the word“appear,” right?) Yes. (Till now, you stillcant interpret it. Okay, How about thewhole sentence? Do you think its hard?)No. (T: Wait…, did you think “given”influence your comprehension of thewhole sentence?) No. (T: So you justskipped it, right?) Yes.

(In this phase, Student K stilldidnt take actions to obtain themeaning of “appear.” However,he thought the word “given”didnt hinder the sentencecomprehension, so s/he took anaction, ignoring it and readingon.)

Paragraph 3 Suspend judgment(T: You didnt interpret the word,“kinds,” did you?) No. (T: So you pausedhere. Was it because you couldntunderstand the word or because youdidnt know its meaning here?) I didntknow its meaning here. (T: So youcouldnt figure it out, could you?) No, Icouldnt.

(In this phase, Student K statedthat the reason why he didntinterpret the word, “kinds,” wasbecause s/he didnt know themeaning of “kinds” in thissentence. As a result, s/he choseto suspend the word in theprocess of interpreting thissentence.)

Form a tentative hypothesis(T: did you learn “uniform motion”before?)Yes, both words. (T: Both?) Youmean each word or ?… (T: The phrase.)It didnt seem so. (T: How did you knowyou should interpret this phrase asuniform motion?) “Uniform motion,” Ithought it might refer to united. (T: Soin accordance with the context, you?…)I took a guess. (T: You guessed it.) Yes.

(Student K used the priorknowledge and the clues fromthe context to guess themeaning of “uniform motion”and succeeded. Moreover, seenfrom Ks protocol here, it can beproved that s/he utilized areading strategy applied in thepresent study, using contextclues.)

Ignore and read on(T: Why didnt you interpret words inparentheses?) It is fine to interpret justone of them. The other refers to 48kilometers. (T: Thats why you justdirectly skipped it.) Yeah. (Do you thinkthe sentence is hard?) No.

(Student K skipped theinterpretation of “48 kilometers”because he thought its adequateto interpret either “30 miles” or“48 kilometers.”)

Unobservable(T: Basically, the whole sentence is nothard, isnt it?) No. (T: No problem?) No.(T: Okay.)

(Student K had no problem withthe interpretation of thissentence.)


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TABLE 4 Student K’s Protocols and Engagements of ComprehensionMonitoring Strategies (Continued)


Reread the current sentence(T: Why did you skip the part, “a stopsign?”) Doesnt that mean the still state?(T: Did you think so at that moment?)Yes. (T: Why did you directly reread“curve” without interpreting it? Was thatbecause you didnt know its meaning?)No, I know the meaning. (T: One morequestion, “accelerated motion”) Thatshould refer to accelerated motion. (T:So you just interpreted it wrongly at thattime. Do you think something wrongwith the sentence? At the first time, youinterpreted “acceleration” asdeceleration, but now you changed. Youare allowed to reread the sentenceagain.). . . Im sure it refers toacceleration. . . . Well, in acceleration,going faster and faster is not the onlyissue. . . . Keeping slowing down isanother issue.

(In this phase, Student Kexplained the reason why hesimply reread the word curve”instead of interpreting it intoChinese. Besides, Student Kreread the sentence and madesure about the meaning of“acceleration.”)

meaning of “acceleration.” From the retrospective protocol of thesame sentence, it can be observed that Student G was aware ofhow he connected what he read with his prior knowledge in thethink-aloud procedure and did not take any further comprehen-sion monitoring strategies. Apparently, the utilization of readingstrategies is enough for Student G to successfully decode the mean-ing of unfamiliar words and to accomplish sentence interpreting;therefore, he did not have to take other remedial actions (CMstrategies). Thus, reading strategies helped a reader’s comprehen-sion when s/he lacks sufficient language knowledge to understanda text.

Additionally, it is evident that when encountering readingproblems, readers sometimes may utilize both reading and com-prehension monitoring strategies simultaneously in the readingprocess. For instance, seen from Student G’s think-aloud pro-tocol of sentence five, “the last sentence means. . . that word. . . I

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TABLE 5 Student G’s Protocols and Engagements of Reading Strategies(Less-Proficient Reader)

Back-Translations of Protocols Engagements of Reading Strategies

Paragraph 3 UnobservableNow is the second law. . . If there is a

large force given to an object, thenthe object will move faster.

(Student G accessed the meaning ofthe sentence literally and did notencounter any problems.)

Any “change”. . . Any change on a. . .that is, any speed or direction. . .that is, an object. . . If there is anychange in an object’s speed ordirection, it is calledacceleration. . . . This is about theacceleration! It will change speedor direction! If the acceleration isminus, the direction will change.

RereadingGuessing meaning

Connecting the text to priorknowledge (Student G was not surethe meaning of “acceleration”;however, later he thought oftheories about acceleration andused his prior knowledge to decodethe meaning of acceleration.)

Acceleration and mass. . . in thissentence. . . I don’t understandthe last word “proportional” of thissentence. But I think it saysacceleration and mass are notabsolutely related. That is, theweight and size of an object is notrelated to its acceleration.

Guessing meaning(Student G failed to comprehendthe meaning of “proportional” andguessed its meaning as “relative.”But later he changed his owninterpretation in sentences fourand five.)

This idea. . . this concept is. . . that it isharder to accelerate. . . um. . .(hesitate) Oh! I made a mistake.You can read the followingsentence, which says a heavierobject. . . an object with a largermass. . . It is harder to accelerateit.

Using context cluesSelf-correcting

(Student G thought of “a heavierobject” when seeing “it is harder toaccelerate. . . ” in the sentence.That means he used context cluesto comprehend this sentence andcorrected his/her comprehensionof sentence three.)

The last sentence means. . . thatword. . . I hypothesize the wordmeans equation. F = M × A meansforce. . . M and A are notproportional. So the thirdsentence from the bottom of thisparagraph says acceleration andmass. . . I do not know themeaning of “proportional”, but itdoesn’t matter. I can read thefollowing two sentences, whichmean if you want to accelerate anobject with a larger mass, you haveto put larger force on it.

Guessing meaningUsing context cluesSelf-correcting(Student G guessed the meaning of

“equation” correctly. Here, heaccessed the meaning of“proportional” in sentence threeby seeking context clues fromsentences four and five andreassured its meaning again.)


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TABLE 5 Student G’s Protocols and Engagements of Reading Strategies(Less-Proficient Reader) (Continued)

Back-Translations of Protocols Engagements of Reading Strategies

Paragraph 4 Suspending problemsThe Third law. . . in the first. . . This

might be unimportant. It shouldmean years or something else. Orit means science. This isunimportant. The word “action” isthe word action. It is usuallyused. . . the word “force”. . . Thatis, the word “action” is used for theword “force.”

Guessing meaningConnecting the text to prior

knowledge (Student G guessed themeaning of “science” correctly andused prior knowledge to decodethe word “action.”)

“action”. . . Action and reaction areboth forces.

Rereading(Student G accessed the meaningof the sentence literally.)

In every motion, there are action andreaction.

Unobservable(Student G had no problemsdecoding the lexical meaning ofthe sentence.)

The force in reaction. . . That is, actionand reaction are the same. If yousee “the same,” you know it meansthe same. That is, action andreaction are the same. But. . . butreaction. . . But the direction ofreaction and action are opposite.

Using context cluesRereading (succeeded)

(Student G decoded the meaningof the sentence literally withoutany problems.)

hypothesize the word means equation. F = M × A means force. . . Mand A are not proportional. So the third sentence from the bot-tom of this paragraph says acceleration and mass. . . I do not knowthe meaning of ‘proportional,’ but it doesn’t matter. I can readthe following two sentences, which mean if you want to acceler-ate an object with a larger mass, you have to put larger force onit,” indicates that when interpreting the third sentence, StudentG adopted reading strategies to decode the word meaning. Ex-cept this, he also went beyond merely understanding the sentenceand began to revise the previous interpretation. That is, whilereading the sentence, he kept thinking about his/her previousperformance and adopted comprehension-monitoring strategiesto better his/her own interpretation. This also can be noted inStudent G’s retrospective protocol. In this case, comprehension

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TABLE 6 Student G’s Protocols and Engagements of ComprehensionMonitoring Strategies

Back-Translations of ProtocolsEngagement ofCM Strategies

Paragraph 3 Unobservable(T: Do you have any problem with this sentence? It

should be easily understood, right?) Yes, it is.(T: Why couldn’t you make sure about the meaning of

“acceleration?”. . . Did you think this word look like“acceleration” or you guess from the whole sentence?)Both. I’ve memorized it influencing the speed anddirection before. I thought it should be “acceleration.”

Unobservable

The word, “pro. . . ,”is the problem. A and M are indeedrelated. (T: Why did you say, “A & M are not related inthe think-aloud procedure?” Is that really so?) Seenfrom this formula, they indeed are related.. . . Let mesee. . . yes! Related. . . . At the first time, I saw theword, ”not”; as a result, I thought they are not related.

Reread thecurrentsentence

Monitor oneself

(T: In the beginning, you didn’t explain the sentence veryclearly, but later you explained it again. Why?) I justsaid A and M are not related in the think-aloudprocess. Oh, but now I think they are related. When Iread here, I had doubt of its meaning. . . .Then I sawthe sentence it is harder to accelerate. . . . I concludedit is harder to accelerate a heavier object.

Suspendjudgment

Rereading thecurrentsentence

Monitor oneself

(T: So you comprehended the third sentence by readingthe following two sentences.) Yes. (T: So you changedyour mind. You think A and M are related. Do youknow the meaning of “proportional”?) The thirdsentence. . . that word. . . Does the word mean“proportion”? I think so. . . See, an object withacceleration and mass. . . if the larger the accelerationis, the smaller mass an object should have. . . So A & Mare “not proportional.”

Form a tentativehypothesis(succeeded)

Rereadpreviouscontext(succeeded)

Monitor oneself

Paragraph 4 Unobservable(T: It’s quite easy to understand the two sentences,

right?) Yes. In science, ”action” is used for the word“force” (T: Did you learn such an notion before?)Yes. . .

(T: It’s quite easy to understand the two sentences,right?) Yes.

Unobservable

(T: Did you understand this sentence by means of lexicalmeaning or prior knowledge?) I read it and Iunderstood.

Unobservable

(T: Did you understand this sentence by means of lexicalmeaning or prior knowledge?) I read it again and Iunderstood.

Reread currentsentences(succeeded)

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TABLE 7 Comparison Examples of Readers’ Engagements in Reading andComprehension Monitoring Strategies

Pair One:When readers have no problems in comprehending sentences, the adoption

of strategies cannot be observed in the reading process.(Student G, less-proficient reader)

Now is the Second law. . . . If there is a large force given to an object, then the objectwill move faster.(T: Do you have any problem with this sentence? It should be easily understood, right?) Yes, it is.

(Student C, less-proficient reader)The second law. . . If there is a very large force on a relative object, then relatively. . . will move

very fast.

(T: Okay, you interpreted this sentence literally. Is there any problem?) Interpreting it. . . I don’t think so. . . . . . (T: How about this paragraph describing the second law? Did you combine what it said with thesecond law?) I hadn’t thought of what is the second law till I read the end of this paragraph. . . .

Interpretation:When interpreting the first sentence in paragraph three, Student G

successfully interpreted the meaning of sentence without any problems; onthe other hand, Student C also interpreted the sentence literally.

Pair Two:When confronted with reading problems, utilizing some specific strategy is

useful to aid reading comprehension. Student G successfully adoptedstrategies to repair his/her reading failure; however, Student C failed.(Student G, less-proficient reader)

Any “change”. . . Any change on a. . . that is, any speed or direction. . . that is, an object. . . . If there isany change in an object’s speed or direction, it is called acceleration. Well. It should be theacceleration. This is about the acceleration! It will change speed or direction! If the accelerationis minus, the direction will change.

(T: Why couldn’t you make sure about the meaning of “acceleration?”. . . Did you think this wordlook like ”acceleration” or you guess from the whole sentence?) Both. I’ve memorized itinfluencing the speed and direction before. I thought it should be “acceleration.”

(Student C, less-proficient reader)Any change in this relative speed. . . and. . . and. . . I forgot. . . is called

acceleration.(T: Here, you also skipped “direction.” Why?) Because I just thought something wrong with it. Then I

knew it is reaction, but I don’t know how to connect them with each other, so I skipped it.

Interpretation:When interpreting sentence two in paragraph three, Student G successfully

took remedial actions to obtain the meaning of “acceleration;” however,Student C just skipped the unknown word “direction” and did not interpretthe sentence completely.

Pair ThreeWhen a reader began to monitor and evaluate his/her reading performance,

the strategy s/he utilized turned into a comprehension monitoring strategy.(Student G, Think-aloud protocol)

The last sentence means. . . that word. . . I hypothesize the word means equation. F = M × Ameans force. . . M and A are not proportional. So the third sentence from the bottom of thisparagraph says acceleration and mass. . . I do not know the meaning of “proportional”, but itdoesn’t matter. I can read the following two sentences, which mean if you want to accelerate anobject with a larger mass, you have to put larger force on it.


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TABLE 7 Comparison Examples of Readers’ Engagements in Reading andComprehension Monitoring Strategies (Continued)

(Student G—Retrospective protocol)(T: So you comprehended the third sentence by reading the following twosentences.) Yes. (T: So you changed your mind. You think A and M arerelated. Do you know the meaning of “proportional”?) The thirdsentence. . . that word. . . Does the word mean “proportion”? I thinkso. . . See, an object with acceleration and mass. . . if the larger theacceleration is; the smaller mass an object should have. . . So A and M are“not proportional.”

Interpretation:When Student G was interpreting the fifth sentence in paragraph Three,s/he also was thinking about the third sentence at the same time. Student Gkept monitoring his reading performance and trying to figure out themeaning of unknown words by seeking for context clues. S/he successfullyobtained the correct meaning of the third sentence in the end.

monitoring strategies functioned to supervise the effectiveness ofreading strategies and to achieve the goal of grasping the meaningof a text that reading strategies failed to achieve.

Tables 4–7 depict the overlaps and similarities between read-ing strategies and comprehension monitoring strategies based onthe categories proposed by previous studies. Even if these strate-gies belong to different divisions, they have similar functions: tohelp reading comprehension. For instance, observed from Tables 3and 4, when Student K interpreted the last sentence in paragraphthree, it could be perceived that he utilized rereading to rereadthe word “curve,” and went on reading in the think-aloud pro-cess while he adopted Rereading the current sentence to readsentence nine again and assured his interpretation in the retro-spective process. The strategies that Student K utilized in two dif-ferent processes are similar to each other. All of them are to aidthe reading process. Moreover, seen from protocols of sentencestwo and four, Student K had no problems in understanding thesentences in the text; therefore, the adoption of any strategiescould not be observed in both of think-aloud and retrospectiveprocedures.

In addition, Student G’s protocols in Tables 5 and 6 alsodemonstrated the similar functions between reading and compre-hension monitoring strategies. For example, when interpreting

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sentence eight in paragraph four, Student G did not encounterany problems in understanding the sentence, so the adoption ofany strategies is unobservable in both of protocols. However, ifconfronted with reading problems, the reading strategies wereutilized. For instance, seen from all the protocols with respect tosentence three in paragraph four, Student G did not understandthe meaning of the sentence very well in the first place, but laterhe used context clues in sentences four and five and finally got ac-cess to the meaning of sentence three. Apparently, Student G notonly utilized a context clues strategy to guess the meaning of “pro-portional,” but also further adopted comprehension monitoringstrategies to figure out the correct meaning of that word. His/herengagements of reading strategies are quite similar to those ofcomprehension monitoring ones. In other words, Student G uti-lized similar reading strategies and comprehension monitoringstrategies to successfully interpret sentence three.

Conclusions

From the results of this study, it can be observed that readers uti-lize reading strategies and comprehension monitoring strategies toaid their reading and interpreting. If readers do not have sufficientlanguage knowledge, they adopt reading strategies to solve theirproblems in understanding textual information. Reading strate-gies are cognitive actions taken to repair problems resulted fromthe insufficiency of language knowledge and to get literal mean-ing. Take pair two in Table 7 as an example, when reading sentencetwo in paragraph three for the first time, Student G did not makesure the meaning of “acceleration” within the sentence; however,later he successfully obtained its literal meaning by guessing cor-rectly. This demonstrated that Student G activated the knowledgeof reading strategies and successfully solved a reading problem. Inthe reading process, readers undertake either text or backgroundknowledge to guess the meanings of the unknown words. Readers,with text-based approach, can guess the meanings of unfamiliarwords more correctly since they attend to the topic-related clues tomake decisions about the possible answers. However, readers, withbackground knowledge–based approach, tend to guess incorrectlyfor they are unable to inhibit unrelated information from their

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wide background knowledge. In this case, Student G successfullyused text-based strategies to solve the problem in understandinga specific word.

Besides, the think-aloud protocols in this study further indi-cate a controversial but long-believed concept that recognition orcategorization of certain reading strategies can be done by meansof observation of readers’ think-aloud verbal reports. Until now,a majority of researchers have categorized reading strategies bydirectly observing and analyzing readers’ reading processes. How-ever, it is worthy that while these researchers were working hardon categorizing reading strategies, they were doing it by their ownjudgment at the same time. In many cases, it could only be ob-served that readers indeed were equipped with knowledge of read-ing strategies; nonetheless, it is hard to classify which strategy orstrategies had been utilized. Student G in pair two in Table 7 servedas a good example. Merely seen from Student G’s think-aloud pro-tocol, it is not easy to identify which strategy he actually used. Inthis case, with further analysis of retrospective protocol of the samesentence, strategies that Student G really utilized in the readingprocess are identified.

In addition to utilizing reading strategies to go on reading,readers also may activate their comprehension monitoring knowl-edge to consciously monitor, evaluate, or manage their readingprocess. From the results of this study, it can be found that mostreaders are equipped with knowledge of comprehension monitor-ing. Seen from Tables 3 to 7, it is evident that readers are awareof their own reading processes. As for comprehension monitoringknowledge, it comes before the adoption of any strategies, the rea-son for which is that it plays a crucial role for readers to perceivethe existence of any reading failures and to adopt certain strategiesto repair them. But for being equipped with comprehension mon-itoring knowledge, readers are unable to detect reading failures,figure out how to overcome them, or even discover why these fail-ures occur. To illustrate, seen from protocols of sentences one andtwo in Table 4, Student K was aware that he interpreted “frame ofreference” awkwardly and kept thinking about the interpretation.This proves that Student K is equipped with comprehension mon-itoring knowledge, which aids readers in detecting and furtheradopting specific strategies to solve reading problems throughoutthe reading process.

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Comprehension monitoring strategies take place when areader’s comprehension monitoring knowledge is activated anddetect a reading problem. Take pair one in Table 7 as an exam-ple; when interpreting the sentence, both Student G and StudentC had no problems in comprehending the sentence. Therefore,neither of them took any strategies. It can be inferred that theircomprehension monitoring knowledge was in the stand-by status.Comprehension monitoring strategies are those intentional tech-niques by which readers monitor or manage their reading. To ex-emplify, seen from Student G’s protocol in example one of pairthree in Table 7, Student G intentionally utilized context clues byreading the fourth and fifth sentences to comprehend sentencethree. Apparently, when interpreting sentence five, he also keptmonitoring his performance and corrected the previous interpre-tation. At last, Student G successfully corrected the interpretationof sentence three. From the above mentioned, it is proved that uti-lization of comprehension monitoring strategies indeed can offergreat helps in enhancing reading performance.

On the other hand, observed from the results of the presentstudy, reading strategies and comprehension monitoring strategiesresemble each other in many ways. Both of them function as usefulimplements to solve reading problems and possess similar titles anddefinitions in many types; however, they are not completely thesame. As for the distinction between these two kinds of strategies,the example in pair three in Table 7 can serve as a good example.In the reading process, if readers began to monitor or managetheir reading process, the strategy they utilized then went beyondmerely understanding literal or textual information and furtherturned into a comprehension monitoring strategy.

Seen from example one in pair three in Table 7, at the meantime of interpreting sentence five, Student G still kept consideringhis interpretation of sentence three, tried to correct it by seekingcontext clues from sentences four and five, and eventually suc-ceeded it. The strategy that Student G used at that moment hasbecome a comprehension monitoring strategy as soon as he beganto monitor and evaluate his reading performances. From the abovementioned, it can be observed that Student G consciously utilizedthree strategies which belong to comprehension monitoring ones:“form a tentative hypothesis,” “reread the previous context,” and“monitor oneself.” Moreover, observed from example two, Student

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C at first did not know how to interpret sentence three and fourin paragraph three; nonetheless, he tried hard to interpret thesentence in his own way in the retrospective procedure. In thiscase, he adopted a strategy beyond the level of simply reading forunderstanding the sentence, “form a tentative hypothesis,” to bet-ter the interpreting performance. That is, Student C also utilized acomprehension monitoring strategy rather than a reading strategy.

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that eventhough reading strategies and comprehension monitoring strate-gies both serve to facilitate reading comprehension, they functiondifferently. Reading strategies are those that help readers solve theproblems in figuring out meanings of printed words while compre-hension monitoring strategies are those that help readers solvethe problems beyond the printed words. The utilization of read-ing strategies can help readers comprehend a text literally; on theother hand, the comprehension monitoring strategies evaluate theuse of the reading strategies. The reading strategies alone can helpsolving some reading problems, but the adoption of comprehen-sion monitoring strategies increase the opportunity of successfulreading comprehension. Reading strategies and comprehensionmonitoring strategies might take place simultaneously, but theyprovide different functions to resolve a reader’s reading problems.

To conclude, in addition to the acquisition of sufficient lan-guage knowledge and the utilization of reading strategies, readersshould be equipped with comprehension monitoring knowledgeand familiar with the utilization of comprehension monitoringstrategies as well. In this way, it is not difficult for readers to achievethe success in critical reading.

Implications

From the conclusion, three implications toward EFL reading in-struction can be addressed.

First, before teaching any strategies, teachers should helpstudents accumulate sufficient basic language knowledge. With-out adequate basic language knowledge as reading resources, itis impossible for students to understand what the text is about,let alone learning new knowledge by reading. If students asreaders cannot obtain the meaning of texts, even if possess-ing the ability of utilizing reading strategies or comprehension

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monitoring strategies, they are unable to make wide use of readingand comprehension monitoring strategies to assist their readingperformances.

Second, except the prerequisite of possessing sufficient basiclanguage knowledge, students are ought to learn to adopt ade-quate strategies to solve comprehending literal problems, causedby the shortage of certain language knowledge. According toFarrell (2001), students can benefit from the instruction of ef-fective reading strategies and effective reading strategies can betaught. From the results of the present study, it can be perceivedthat readers are able to solve reading failures and successfully ob-tain main ideas of sentences by adopting adequate strategies, suchas rereading sentences, seeking clues from the context, and theforth. Therefore, reading teachers should work hard on teachingstudents the utilization of reading strategies to overcome problemscaused by the insufficiency of certain language knowledge.

Finally, the results in this study demonstrated that posses-sion of comprehension monitoring knowledge and utilization ofcomprehension monitoring strategies indeed provide readers withgreat helps in enhancing reading comprehension and accomplish-ing the interpreting task. Undoubtedly, teachers should empha-size the instruction of comprehension monitoring knowledge andstrategy training because it not only plays an important role forreaders in achieving the success of reading comprehension butalso promote them into critical readers. The comprehension mon-itoring knowledge aids readers to detect reading problems, whiletaking comprehension monitoring strategies aids readers to takeintentional and remedial actions and thus solve problems.

From the three above-mentioned implications, it can be con-cluded that in the field of reading instruction, teachers shouldbe devoted in instructions of students’ basic language knowledge,knowledge of reading strategies, knowledge of comprehensionmonitoring, and utilization of reading or comprehension moni-toring strategies. Teachers’ responsibility is to make students togradually be accustomed to be a strategic reader in fulfilling anytypes of reading tasks, such as cloze blank-filling, reading compre-hension tests, and the like. In order to make students as indepen-dent and autonomous readers, teachers are ought to teach theabove-mentioned through practical practices, step-by-step instruc-tions, and well-planned curricula.

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Barnett, M. (1988). Reading through context: How real and perceived strat-egy use affects L2 comprehension. The Modern Language Journal, 72(2), 150–162.

Block, E. (1986). The comprehension strategies of second language readers.TESOL Quarterly, 20(3), 463–494.

Carrell, P. L. (1988). SLA and classroom instruction: Reading. Annual Review ofApplied Linguistics, 9, 223–242.

Carrell, P. L. (1992). Awareness of text structure: Effects on recall. LanguageLearning, 42(1), 1–20.

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Cohen, A. D. (1998). Strategies in learning and using a second language. London:Longman.

Collins, A., & Smith, E. (1980). Teaching the process of reading comprehension (Tech.Report No. 182.). Urbana, IL: Illinois University, Center for the Study of Read-ing (ED 193 616).

Davies, F. (1995). Introducing Reading. London: Penguin.ERIC (2005). http://www.eric.ed.gov.Farrell, T. S. C. (2001). Teaching reading strategies: “It takes time!” Reading in a

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Appendix I

The English Text for Training Think-Aloud Task

During the summer session there will be a revised schedule of services forthe university community. Specific changes for intercampus bus services,cafeteria, summer hours for the infirmary and recreational and athleticfacilities will be posted on the bulletin board outside of the cafeteria. Weeklymovie and concert schedules which are in the process of being arrangedwill be posted each Wednesday outside of the cafeteria.

Intercampus buses will leave the main hall every hour on the half hourand make all of the regular stops on their route around the campus. Thecafeteria will serve breakfast, lunch and early dinner from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.during the week and from noon to 7 p.m. on weekends. The library willmaintain regular hours during the week, but shorter hours on Saturdaysand Sundays. Weekend hours are from noon to 7 p.m.

All students who want to use the library borrowing services and therecreational, athletic, and entertainment facilities must have a valid sum-mer identification card. This announcement will also appear in the nextissue of the student newspaper.

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Appendix II

The English Text in the Think-Aloud Task

There was a man in England. His name is Sir Isaac Newton. He had badhair, but he was a very intelligent man. He was good at calculus and physics.He thought of the three basic ideas that can be used in the physics of mostmotion. They have been tested and proven so much over the years thatscientists now call them Newton’s three laws of motion.

First LawWhen an object does not move, it is said to stay at rest. An object

that is moving is said to stay in motion in the same direction and speed. Ifnothing is happening to you and nothing does happen, you will never goto any places. If you are going in a specific direction, you will always go thatway and can only stop when there is an outside force put on you.

Second LawIf there is a larger force given to the object, then the object will move

faster. Any change in an object’s speed and direction is called acceleration.Acceleration and mass of an object are not proportional. This means it isharder to accelerate an object with a larger mass. The equation for this ideais “F = m × a.”

Third LawIn science, the word “action” is often used for the word “force.” Ac-

tion and reaction are both forces. For every motion, there are action andreaction. The force of reaction is the same with the force of action, but thereaction is in a direction opposite to the action.

The motion—for example, people traveling in cars, planets movingaround the sun—happens according to Newton’s three laws of motion. Allobjects at rest tend to stay at rest, and all objects in motion tend to stay inmotion. The force, mass and acceleration in any motion are always relatedto one another in the same ways. Whenever there is an action, there isalways the same but an opposite reaction.

Appendix III

The English Text in the Think-Aloud Task

Things are in motion everywhere. Cars move along roads. Water flows inrivers. Airplanes move across the skies. The planets move through spacearound the sun.

The place from which you watch a particular motion is called your“frame of reference.” For example, if you are standing on the ground watch-ing a car pass by, your frame of reference is the earth’s surface. To you, itappears that the car is moving. But a given motion can look different to

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people in different frames of reference. To someone whose frame of refer-ence is the car, the car does not appear to be moving.

There are two basic kinds of motion. If an object moves at a constantspeed, covering the same distance each second without changing direction,we say that is in uniform motion. A car moving down the street at 30 miles(48 kilometers) per hour is in uniform motion. If the speed or direction ofthe object changes, then it is in accelerated motion. A car speeding up froma stop sign or after slowing down to go around a curve is in acceleration.

In general, the motion we encounter every day consists of a mixture ofuniform and accelerated motions. If someone throws a baseball, for exam-ple, the ball moves at a steady rate in the horizontal direction. If it leavesthe thrower’s hand traveling at 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour parallelto the ground, it will move at about that same speed throughout its course.In this direction, its motion is uniform. At the same time, however, theball moves up and down under the influence of gravity. This is acceleratedmotion because the vertical speed of the ball is changing throughout itscourse. Thus the motion of the ball is a combination of uniform motion inthe horizontal direction and accelerated motion in the vertical direction.

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reading strategies or comprehension monitoring strategies?

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